Wednesday, January 4, 2012

So Damn Lucky-Deborah Coonts

So Damn Lucky


Deborah Coonts

Forge, Feb 28 2012, $24.99

ISBN: 9780765364579



At Las Vegas’s Babylon Hotel, magician Dimitri Fortunoff dies in front of an audience while performing Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell. To control adverse damage, the hotel’s customer relations chief fixer Lucky O’Toole tries to spin the tragedy.



Lucky believes Dimitri was the infamous “Masked Houdini” who had vowed to reveal all of the great magician’s secrets. She wonders if one of his angry peers killed him. Feeling unlucky, she investigates the case as a homicide not an accident after the victim’s body never made it to UMC as expected; his vanishing in thin air seems like a cheap PR stunt as if he was still performing, but from the beyond. That is followed up by a stuffed rabbit providing her with a death threat; which seems milder than what is happening with the men in her personal life from her supervisor Albert “The Big Boss” Rothstein, her live-in lover Teddie, former co-worker Paxton Dane and the French chef.



The latest Lucky O’Toole amateur sleuth misadventures (see Lucky In Love and Lucky Stiff) are an amusing lighthearted romp. Much of the fun comes from Lucky’s on the job interaction with patrons as she tries to talk them out of foolishness. The whodunit is clever while the life (and one death) in the men turns the protagonists life upside down as Lucky feels she crapped out.



Harriet Klausner



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